Dear fellow Scoliopodophiles: Good news on the Scoliopus front: S. bigelowii is alive and growing. S. hallii is still frozen (yet it's only a few inches away ) so I'm not sure what's going on there. I expected S. bigelowii to be the less hardy of the two, so the fact that it is growing is very good news to me. Both of these were wintered in an unheated frame which was frozen shut until yesterday. BTW, I'm not calling it bigelowii instead of bigelovii because I really know which is correct (correct this week, anyway); it's just a habit. Shakespeare is renown for his knowledge of garden plants; but I really wonder if he was all that interested. Otherwise, he would have written "first, kill all the botanists" instead of "first, kill all the lawyers"! We were pretty much frozen between the second week of January and late last week. Although we have not had any unusually low temperatures, the average temperatures have been 5-10 degrees F low. This week daytime temps have been above freezing daily, and snow/ice cover is melting/evaporating. And I'm able to get into the frames or see previously snow covered beds. Colchicum luteum foliage is poking up, too. All this talk about Tecophilaea is driving me crazy! You zone 8-ers are shameless! Jim McKenney jimmckenney2starpower.net Montgomery County, Maryland zone 7 where Northern Cardinals, Titmice, Carolina Wrens, and Screech Owls are all singing.